Welcome back to the forum
@ed1960! I empathize with players such as yourself, who had to leave the game due to special circumstances and I hope your family is doing better. I agree, that there should be an “Away” and/or “Pause” button for decaying resources when players have to leave the game.
The only concern I could possibly see is players trying to take advantage of this new feature if this gets implemented. Maybe a way to prevent cheating might be a grace period for after the player wants to resume their gameplay. I’m not sure what a reasonable time period would be, but it might help deter players from taking advantage of this feature.